BATTLETECH: REMNANT LEGACY
by Crazyjay555
Summary: A misjump takes a small Merc company into Remnants solar system, and their only hope is a strange signal from the surface and the help of a young huntress coming to terms with her own life. What fate awaits the crew of the Nomad? find out in BATTLETECH: REMNANT LEGACY


**CHAPTER ONE: So much for R &R**

 _Today, had been a good day._

Minna Hartmann reflected on this as she stumbled through the cramped and dull gunmetal grey corridors of the Union class dropship "Nomad". Her heavy combat boots caused the grated floors to reverberate with every step, adding a metallic beat to the music and laughter that followed her through the corridor, and away from the ship's mess hall.

It had taken three months. Three long months of grueling convoy escorts and near constant raids from a group of pirates on the remote Steiner agri-world of Dagr II. Three months of living in and out of her Warhammer's cockpit, sweltering away in the stale humid air; her air conditioning unit a barely working reminder of cutting a few too many corners in maintenance again. Of course, if she were being honest it was just another piece on a laundry list of barely working components that made up her pride and joy. Her personal Battlemech and restoration project, a venerable StarCorps Industries Warhammer 7A. By pure chance she'd found it without a cockpit, rusting away in a backwater 'mech scrapyard. After 2 and half years and more C-Bills than she cared to remember, she had got the damn thing running. Of course it lacked many of the creature comforts of a newer machine, and no matter how long she worked on it something always seemed to be broken or barely working. However, it had yet to fail her when it counted, and to Minna that was all that mattered.

She smiled to herself and took another slug from her pocket flask, the cheap whisky making itself known as it burned a trail down her throat. Yes she thought to herself, today had been a good day because it had marked an end to the Dagr II contract. The pirates had been dealt with, their base of operations destroyed, and the survivors either scattered or surrendered. Most importantly the Lancer's had pulled in a more than healthy haul of salvage and C-Bills as a reward for a job well done. Despite rarely going more than a day without some kind of attack from the pirates, only a few of us were coming home in a bodybag.

Her smile faltered a little, and she slowed to bang the flask on the steel wall before taking another shot. One more toast to the fallen, one of many she and the others had made that night.

She stumbled around a corner to one of the mechbay's access ladders, catching herself on the bright yellow safety railing before clumsily maneuvering onto the rungs and making her way down to the lower deck. This was hardly the first time she'd made this journey. Minna's smile returned as she thought about the countless times she'd made this trip through the Nomad on her way back to her bunk. As she descended she could still make out the sounds of those Lancer's not quite ready to call it a night; indeed, the music from the mess hall could no doubt be heard in every corner of the "Shacks", the name they'd given to the deck which served as the mess and living quarters for most of the infantry and crew onboard.

The Nomad had changed quite a bit over the years from the humble Union dropship it once was. Long gone was the simple 'mech carrier; whole decks had been gutted, replaced, or modified to allow for the housing, support, and deployment of an entire combined arms mercenary company. The Nomad was at the heart of every operation with the Lancers, and was home to many of them in between contracts, herself included.

She hopped off the ladder and started across the mechbay, taking in the space around her as she walked. It was both cavernous and circular due the spheroid design of the ship, one of the only rooms onboard she couldn't call cramped. The centre of of the room was home to the large elevator platform meant to transport 'mechs, ammunition, or vehicles in between this deck and the ad hoc vehicle bay below it. The high ceiling was crisscrossed with a latticework of electrical cabling, fluorescent lights, and utility catwalks; while carefully secured piles of ammunition, weapons, and spare parts formed haphazard metallic mountains all around the room.

As she approached her bunk space, she paused to take in the most dominating feature of the mechbay, and the machines from which the room got it's name: the Battlemechs. Towering machines of war bristling with enough weaponry to fight a small army, each and every 'mech was a marvel of technology and engineering built around a nuclear fusion engine that could power a small city. Each 'mech was securely locked in an individual gantry, and was surrounded on all sides by mobile access platforms and cranes. All of this assisted in the maintenance necessary to keep such gargantuan and complicated machines operational.

She continued towards her bunk, careful not to trip over any tools while she stepped into her 'mech's gantry. As she ducked beneath low hanging hydraulic cables from the bottom of a maintenance lift, she reached out with her left hand and placed it on the scarred metal of her 'mech's foot. She let her palm slide across the rough steel surface as she made her way around its right side. She conttinued towards a small alcove in the rear wall of the gantry and parted the makeshift doorway to step into her personal quarters.

Hidden by a pair of bedsheets and only slightly bigger than a janitor's closet, her bunk space was little more than 4 kitbags and a cot. Space was a commodity on board the ship and though she was pretty sure she could have found room in the shacks, she preferred her current sleeping arrangements. It honestly felt right to sleep near her 'mech; the smell of grease and oil and the sounds of people working away with torches and cutters had long since grown familiar and comfortable. She unzipped the front of her pilot's jumpsuit and shrugged off the shoulders to expose her white tank top, enjoying the cool air on her bare arms. Tying the jumpsuits arms loosely around her waist, she stepped over a kitbag to reach her cot, upon which she sat down heavily. She unlaced her combat boots slightly before kicking them off and collapsing onto the olive drab canvas.

Minna let herself sink into the cot, and the exhaustion that had been nipping at her heels the last few months settled on her like a heavy blanket. Hooked up as they were to the jumpship "Gilgamesh", the Nomad was little more than a floating hotel. Minna had long since learned she preferred sleeping through FTL travel. With a few hours of much needed rack time and a short jump, the Lancers would be back in a friendly port, ready for a little rest and relaxation while they looked for a new contract. It wouldn't be all fun and games of course; on top of sorting out the crew's wages and making arrangements for the fallen, they had salvage to sell and repairs to make, not to mention fuel and ammunition needed to be restocked. That was nothing however, when compared to the stress of Dagr II. 

Comfortably settled into her cot and drunk from the party that still continued above, it didn't take long for Minna to drift off into some much needed sleep.

….. /-/….

The black leather seat clicked back into position and Yang Xiao Long wiped the sweat from her brow as she stood up from beside her motorcycle. She sighed contentedly as a cool spring breeze swept through her father's shed, where she'd been storing her bike for the last few months.

She'd spent most of the afternoon working on "Bumblebee". The bike had sat untouched throughout the winter months and she wanted to make sure everything was in working order now that it was starting to warm up. Though less mechanically minded than her younger sister Ruby, she had been doing the maintenance on Bumblebee for years. It was something of a point of pride, and pride was something she'd been sorely lacking in for a while now.

She frowned slightly as she glanced towards her right arm, or at least where her arm should have been. Grease marred the shiny yellow paint she'd recently applied to the Atlesian prosthetic that began just above her elbow, and she used a nearby rag to wipe it off. She opened and closed her metallic fingers a few times, listening to the quiet hum of the servos within. Looking away she shook her head, turning to walk out into the backyard.

' _Come on Yang no more feeling sorry for yourself'.  
_  
She yawned and stretched her arms high above her head, looking out into the deep orange of the evening sky. The sun hung low, just above the horizon and barely poking through the forest of trees that surrounded her. She walked in through the back door and into the kitchen of the small cabin she had grown up in.

"Hey Yang," her father Tai, welcomed as she entered. He sent her a smile as he looked away from the stove and food he was cooking. "How's Bumblebee look?".

"All tuned up and ready to ride," Yang replied easily, as she washed her hands in the sink, before pulling out a chair to sit down at their small kitchen table. "You were right, it honestly did feel good to work on my bike again".

"That's great sweetheart, I'm glad it helped a bit", Her father's grin grew even larger as he spoke and Yang couldn't help but join in, his honest joy infectious. He scooped a grilled cheese sandwich out of the pan and onto a plate before making his way over to the table, "Figured you'd be hungry after working on your bike".

"Thanks Dad," she said before biting into the thick bread of the sandwich. He turned away from her and made his way back across the kitchen. She listened as he turned the sink on to do some dishes. A comfortable silence settled on the room, broken only by the soft sound of running water and the crunching of bread. Just as Yang finished her sandwich, her father started to speak.

"So I got a call from Signal earlier today," he said with his back turned to her, watching the sink slowly fill up. "They were wondering if I wanted to come back and teach for the spring semester. I'll have to stay at the school for a while, so I'm going to tell them I'm not availi—"

"Dad, no I'll be fine, you should go teach," Yang jumped in, knowing what he was about to say. He turned slightly to look at her, his smile from earlier gone and concern showing on his face. "Seriously Dad, I'm feeling a lot better lately. You can't stay locked up in here with me forever."

He twisted off the taps, sighing as he turned around to face her, "I know that Yang, I do. Still, I can't help but worry. When they brought you back home after Beacon fell…" he drifted off and his face tightened as he searched for the right words. He shook his head and sighed again before speaking, "You're strong Yang, stronger than I was. However, I know from personal experience just how long it can take for those scars to heal. I want to be here if you need me."

Yang glanced down at her prosthetic, and her eyes lingered on it as she started speaking, "I know you're worried Dad, and if it wasn't for you I'd probably still be sitting in my room feeling sorry for myself." She shook her head before continuing,

"I'm not back to how I was, and a part of me thinks I'm never gonna get there again." She looked up from her arm and into his eyes, quickly cutting him off before he could say anything, "But I'm getting better Dad, really I am. And I've started to think that maybe I can find a new person to be at the end of this."

She stood up from the table as she spoke, and crossed the kitchen to give her Dad a hug. He quickly hugged her back, and they stayed like that for a bit, enjoying the moment of closeness between them. Yang looked up at him before continuing, "I can handle some time alone now Dad, it might actually help me a bit. What won't help me is feeling like I'm stopping you from living your life, even if I know you don't feel that way."

Her smile turned cheeky, and Yang pulled away slightly to punch him in the shoulder with her good arm, "Besides, you're starting to cramp my style old man."

Tai broke the hug with a laugh, shoving Yang away lightly, "Okay okay, you've convinced me." He shook his head, smiling as he spoke, "If your bad jokes are coming back then you must be at least good enough to spend a few weeks without me."

Yang effected a shocked expression, gasping loudly before she spoke, "You don't like my jokes? I make them just for you though! I mean come on they're not _bad_ jokes they're _Dad_ jokesfphtptp!—"

She sputtered as he flicked water at her face.

' _Some people just can't appreciate good wordplay.'  
_  
….. /-/….

Minna grunted as she pushed past a technician in the tight corridors of the Nomad, pulling her arms into the sleeves of her jumpsuit as she did so.

' _Everything has gone to shit.'_

The emergency power lightning bathed everything in a dim red light, and the deafening alarm klaxon was doing _wonders_ for Minna's hangover. She kept up her determined gait, a quick pace that would still let her stop before she barreled into someone coming out of an access hatch or around a blind corner. Despite the upgrades to make the ship more liveable, the Nomad was still a dropship and had not been made with a large crew in mind.

Five minutes ago, Minna had been sound asleep in her cot, and she likely would have stayed that way had she not awoken to herself flying out of it. Her short blonde hair was matted and sticky with blood, and she wiped her hand across the gash in her forehead to keep the blood out of her eyes. Head injuries tended to bleed a lot and this one was no exception. 

All around her the ship was alive with activity. People rushed past her, and over the din of the alarm she could hear the clanging of boots and the harsh shouts of the crew trying to assess or repair the damage. She slid past a crouched medtech who was applying bandages to the arm of a wounded crewmember, quickly reaching the end of the corridor. She rounded a corner and approached an access ladder, quickly hopping up and starting to climb. As she ascended she took stock of the situation. 

' _If we're on emergency power it means we aren't hooked up to the Gilgamesh anymore. Hopefully it's just a damaged or misaligned cable, if not….'_

Without a Jumpship, the Nomad would be stranded. Dropships like the Nomad were incapable of Faster than Light travel, lacking both the space and the power necessary for the complex K-F drive that facilitated it. They could only do so by attaching themselves to Jumpships like the Gilgamesh; thus the jumpship would act as a ferry, transporting them from one jump point to another almost instantly.

Minna stepped off the ladder and onto the top deck of the Nomad. She quickly made her way down the corridor to the Command and Control room. The steel doors slid open with a heavy _thunk_ as she approached, hitting her with a blast of warm stale air.

The C&C room was another thing that set the Nomad apart from other Dropships. Two large banks of monitors sat in a semi-circular layout around the room, each attended by an operator. Each station was outfitted with some of the best communications and logistical equipment on the market, and the room chittered with the sound of situation and damage reports as new information flooded in from teams around the ship.

The Computers framed a raised platform in the center of the room, upon which sat a large Holotable. Designed to grant commanders a better understanding of their terrain, The Holotable was capable of displaying a digitally constructed fully 3D image of the C&C room allowed the Lancer's to run their entire combat and noncombat operations from the Nomad, which would essentially act as a heavily armed and mobile HQ.

"Someone please tell me we're not doomed," Minna said as she hopped up the stairs to the holotable and approached the people around it. 

Three people stood on the raised platform of the C&C. To her left stood Chief Engineer Mullins, the head technician of the lancers and the man in charge of keeping everything running. He was a balding, portly man with a pale complexion. To her right, with his eyes fixed firmly on the holo-display in front of him was the commander of the Lancer's armoured and infantry forces, Major Gregory Holt. Built like a brick-shithouse, he was bald and clean shaven with a hard angular face worn in a constant scowl. Finally, standing directly across from her and taking a long draw from a recently lit cigar, was Viktor Romanov, founder and overall commander of the Crimson Lancers. He was by far the oldest person in the room, with a thick grey beard and skin that looked like jerky left in the sun too long.

It was Gregory that replied to Minna's _optimistic_ greeting.

"Nice of you to join us Lance Commander Hartmann, I see from your forehead that you've become intimate with the walls of the ship," He spoke quickly and clearly, with a voice used to giving orders. He looked up at her from the holotable before continuing, "I'm sure another head injury was _exactly_ what you needed."

"Come on Greg cut me some slack," Minna smiled lecherously, wiping some blood from her forehead and then onto her pant leg as she spoke, "it's not like anything else is getting intimate with me these days, unless of course you're saying you'd be down for a tumble," she said while waggling her eyebrows.

"Charming..." he deadpanned in response.

"Commander Hartmann's personal life aside," Viktor interrupted his subordinates, speaking in a thick russian accent with a voice like gargled gravel. "We have some more pressing matters to attend to." he paused to take a long draw on his cigar, exhaling before he continued, "Chief Engineer Mullins, if you would."

"Right, yes of course Sir, um," Mullins coughed into his hand and then pointed towards the Gilgamesh on the Holotable. "Uh, well as you can see we've suffered something of a misjump, which is to say that we are not where we wanted to end up, nor are we entirely, uh, well we aren't attached to the jumpship anymore."

He gestured towards a planet in the background of the holographic display, "It would also seem we've been deposited next to an unknown world on the edge of the Inner Sphere, which is a rarity I assure you, what with, uh, the majority of known space having been well, um, _known_ for quite some time now." He shuffled around and wrung his hands as he spoke, "It's truly remarkable, and were it not for the, ah, well the dire circumstances that surround us this would no doubt qualify as quite the discovery within the scientific community an—"

"Holy shit Mullins," Minna interrupted with a groan, "you are not helping my headache."

He paused, coughing into his hand again before continuing, "Ah yes, my apologies. It would seem after the misjump we've been detached from the Gilgamesh and are now in orbit around an unknown world." He gestured towards the ailing jumpship, "We've made contact with the crew of the GIlgamesh and they tell us that among other things they've suffered extensive damage to the solar charging array for the K-F drive. Without it, they, well ah, they have no way of preparing for another jump."

"So we're stranded here?" Gregory spoke up from across the table, his voice even.

Mullins dabbed sweat from his brow with a handkerchief before speaking, "Well, yes, yes it would seem so. We lack any of the replacement parts to help facilitate repairs of the solar array. We might be able to repair the other damage but without the solar array operational we, well we uh, it would seem tha—

"We're fucked." Minna said, rubbing her temples as she did so.

"...Yes, that is correct," the chief engineer agreed with a sigh.

"And what of the planet below us?" Viktor said while gesturing towards the holo-display, his hand sweeping through a lazy cloud of cigar smoke. "We must know something, how could it have escaped detection for this long?"

"Space is… big?" Mullins said with a nervous shrug causing Minna to snort loudly with laughter. A glare from VIktor showed him the inadequacy of his answer however, and he stammered to continue "We-well actually uh, Sir, it would seem that the planet is not, as we, ah, previously suspected, uninhabited." He turned to speak quietly to a technician behind him, hand gesturing nervously towards the holotable as he did so.

"Yes, er, well, upon closer inspection, we have located several large urban centres as well as a multitude of small towns and villages covering five of the six continents." As Mullins spoke, the holo-display shifted from the current view of their stranded ships, to an enlarged view of the planet. Mullins wrung his hands as he continued, "Strangely, we can detect no long or short range radio communications from the planet, which is what initially led us to believe that it was uninhabited. We've been attempting to hail them on all available frequencies but thus far we've, well, we've received no response whatsoever."

"Perhaps they've regressed technologically?" Gregory offered, looking from the globe and at Mullins, "Who knows how long they've been out here without contact from the outside galaxy. Technology could've been lost as the years passed in isolation."

Mullins perked up as he responded, "I have considered that _exact_ possibility Major Holt! Well deduced!"

"Yeah, _well deduced_ Greg," Minna said with a snicker.

The Major grimaced and shook his head with a sigh.

"Adding some, er, credibility to that hypothesis is that we've detected a rather, well ah… _strange_ signal emanating from the Northern part of the central continent," Mullins continued on, ignoring Minna's laughter. "It is registering in the same wavelengths as a Hyper-Pulse Generator, though the signal is quite erratic and weak." He rotated the planetary image on the holo-display, zooming in on a patch of mountainous, rocky terrain.

A red dot began to flash in the middle of a mountain range as Mullins spoke, "The HPG works on the exact same principals of the 'Gilgamesh's' K-F drive, er, well, on a much smaller scale." Mullins turned to address Viktor, "Despite the ah, miniaturization, the systems are identical in function. If we can reach this site, perhaps we can salvage this malfunctioning HPG to facilitate repairs of the Gilgamesh. It's by no means a for sure thing, but it, ah, well it _may_ work." he finished with nervous smile.

"And then we can get the fuck outta here," Minna said as she unscrewed her pocket flask and slugged back a quick shot. "Sounds good to me."

….. /-/…

AUTHOR'S NOTES:  
Editor (and best friend): GoldenArbiter


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